Opinion: Louisiana’s push for Ten Commandments in schools isn’t over

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry had a remarkably frivolous and flip response earlier this year to parents suing to stop his state’s mandate that every public school – from kindergarten to college – display a Protestant Christian version of the Ten Commandments.
“Tell your child not to look at them,” Landry said in August.
U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles gave that notion the smackdown it deserved Tuesday when he issued a preliminary injunction, stopping the religious posters from being placed in schools. The Baton Rouge-based jurist called the law “coercive and inconsistent with the history of First Amendment and public education,” because parents, by law, must send their kids to school in the state.
Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, vowed to “immediately appeal,” calling this “far from over.”
And, of course, that was always the point here. This isn’t about bolstering education in Louisiana. It’s creeping Christian nationalism in search of judges who will undo American rights.
Landry, Murrill and their pals trying to force religion down the throats of children in a way that obviously violates the U.S. Constitution are oh so eager to get the ultraconservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and then onto the hard-right-controlled U.S. Supreme Court.
Here’s a good thing to teach in public schools everywhere: The First Amendment is only 45 words long, and it packs in a guarantee for five rights – freedom of and from religion, free speech, a free press, the right to assemble and to petition your government. Religion comes first on that list of rights.
This is settled law. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 struck down a Kentucky law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms.
Nonetheless, as we saw with the Supreme Court overturning five decades of settled law when it comes to abortion rights two years ago, nothing can be considered safe or settled now.
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Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me it would not surprise her if Gov. Landry were gunning to get this question in front of the Supreme Court. Her group, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, helped parents sue Louisiana.
“The Supreme Court has already decided this issue, striking down a materially indistinguishable statue in the 1980 decision,” Laser said. “That precedent controls this case, and we do not expect the Supreme Court to overturn it.”
The groups had no choice but to play defense for constitutional rights, Annie Laurie Gaylor told me. She’s co-founder the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“Of course this is the intent of the legislature, but with a law so violative of the Constitution and student rights, a legal challenge is the only way to go and we hope to prevail,” Gaylor said. “It’s hard to conjure up a more egregious flouting of the bar on establishing religion.”
That precedent is even older. The Supreme Court in 1947 ruled that freedom of and from religion – known as the establishment clause – applies to state and local laws.
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Landry and the Republican-controlled Louisiana Legislature challenged the law when they pushed this measure. And they tried to rewrite history to claim that the Ten Commandments have long been a prominent part of American public education, a weak ruse to suggest posting them was not about religion.
A legal historian effectively disputed that claim during testimony in October. DeGravelles agreed with that Tuesday, ruling that the families who sued have a “substantial likelihood of success” in the case.
And the judge said that even if Louisiana has proved the claim that the Ten Commandments were a staple of public school education, it would still violate the establishment clause.
There’s an easy fix here, if Republicans in Louisiana are so eager to push religion in education – encourage parents who agree with that to send their kids to private school, where that sort of thing is legal.
It’s already a very popular option in the state. A report issued last year by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor said that 15% of the state’s more than 775,000 students attend private schools for kindergarten through 12th grade, “making Louisiana the second highest-ranking state in the United States, behind Hawaii,” for private school attendance.
But that would make this something parents chose for their children, not something Landry and his Republican legislature forced on them by law. That’s not the target here.
The real motivation is to force one version of a religion on everyone while using the machinery of government to mow down protections placed in law to stop exactly that.
Louisiana should study up on American history. An honest reading of that subject makes clear that what the state is trying here violates everything the men who wrote the First Amendment were trying to protect.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan